Today's News

Members of the Shelby County Board of Education got a bit of a surprise Thursday night: an accidental preview of a new approach to educating the county’s highest achieving students.

Kerry Fannin, the assistant superintendent for student achievement, was so excited during his presentation at the board’s meeting that he couldn’t sit on an announcement that had been scheduled for the meeting on March 24.

"In two weeks I can't wait to present an accelerated academy for both high schools," he told the board.

Customers of Shelbyville Municipal Water and Sewer may want to double check that they have paid their bills for March.

The company has reported getting a lot of calls from customers who never received those bills.

Enough so, in fact, that Manager Tom Doyle has checked into the matter.

"We're not really sure what happened yet," he said. "We're confident that the number of bills we printed and the weight of the bills before mailing them matched up with what we normally do. From there, we don't know what happened."

Normally, we might congratulate the Shelby County Board of Education for finding a way to end the school year on time.

That’s a goal every year, of course, but the annual recesses required by Mother Nature sometimes cause disruption, for which students – and their families – pay by attending classes, it seems, until Flag Day becomes part of the curriculum.

Today’s the day when we’re supposed to mourn the NCAA Basketball Tournament, aka Big East Invitational, and its myopically developed field and obtusely seeded brackets (for UK fans).

And that would have been a worthy thing to do, to suggest that only the winners from last week’s conference tournaments should move forward, thus removing all the decision-making and golden parachutes for failing teams. Those points have merit.

The feeling was cautiously optimistic Tuesday morning when Shelby County Fiscal Court approved a first reading an amended budget that took a more than $400,000 slice out of its operating budget.

Despite that, Shelby County Judge-Executive Rob Rothenburger said he was not displeased, because though some substantial cuts were made, several took the county out of what he called its “comfort zone,” because it removed any cushion from the categories affected.

Days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami ravaged Japan’s northern coastal cities, some Shelby County families remain numb with shock and weak with relief that their loved ones are safe.

But some of them didn’t know that immediately and say the natural inclination to think the worst kicked in after they saw horrible images of death and destruction on television newscasts from Japan, where the death toll already numbers in the thousands and could climb as high as 10,000.

Shelby County Emergency Management Agency Director Charlie Frazee said that although Kentucky is situated near the New Madrid Seismic Zone, earthquakes that could occur in this area are not likely to be as catastrophic as the one that hit Japan.

Nevertheless, he said he would be taking part in an earthquake training seminar to held this spring.

Some eyes in Shelby County will be smiling Thursday when one of our own celebrates St. Patrick's Day, where most surely would guess is the best place to do so – Ireland.

Stephen Fox, 23, says he has fallen in love with the Emerald Isle and its people in the two months that he has been in Dublin on an internship to complete his college credits at Eastern Kentucky University, where he is a senior, majoring in communication studies.